Huge rescue effort fails to save whales
Carcasses cover beach after one of New Zealand’s worst strandings
Rescuers who tried desperately to refloat a huge pod of beached whales were to return at first light today to see how many survived the night.
The Department of Conservation said about 416 pilot whales stranded near the base of Farewell Spit, Golden Bay overnight Thursday.
About 250 to 300 were already dead when the whales were discovered early yesterday morning, sparking claims DoC should have acted sooner.
The mass stranding is the third- largest recorded in New Zealand since the 1800s.
Takaka DoC operations manager Andrew Lamason said many of the whales appeared “very distressed” and “slowly slipped away” as rescuers were about to leave the beach last night.
Volunteers taking part in the mass rescue mission tried to refloat the whales yesterday and kept them cool with buckets of water. Collingwood Area School students helped out, some singing a waiata.
Earlier in the day, 100 of the whales were refloated at high tide, but about 50 returned to the beach.
Lamason said the refloated survivors swam in the wrong direction and headed back into the bay.
“There are about 50 [ refloated] whales offshore, but they’re not looking great out there, just milling around.
“If you were going to design a geographical trap for whales, Golden Bay is pretty much perfect.”
About 80 to 90 whales were still alive on the beach last night.
Professor Liz Slooton, of the University of Otago’s Department of Zoology, said whales might beach because they were sick, dying, giving birth or disoriented.
While earthquakes and storms could be a factor, human causes, including noise, might also lead to a whale beaching itself, Slooton said.
Slooton added it was “remotely possible, but unlikely” that seismic testing had caused the mass stranding, as suggested yesterday.
“With a mass stranding like the one at Farewell Spit — usually only one or two individuals are sick or in trouble.”
She said the rest of the pod would not leave the area because whales had “very strong social bonds”. Pilot whales were normally found in water several hundred metres deep, and often more than 1000m deep, she said.
“The large areas of very shallow water near Farewell Spit will be confusing for several reasons. It will be difficult for the whales to figure out which way they need to swim to find deeper water as it’s shallow over such large areas.”
On a “normal” stretch of coastline, the whales would not have to go far to find where the water got deeper, she said.
“Echolocation doesn’t work all that well in shallow water. Rather than bouncing back nicely — like off a wall — the sound will tend to bounce away from the whales, with a much smaller proportion of the signal bouncing back.”
DoC ranger Kath Inwood said that previously whale carcasses had been either dropped on the dunes back from the beach, or tethered and taken out to sea to naturally decay.
“With the large number involved in this stranding, consideration will need to be given to practical options for dealing with the carcasses, and keeping them in the ecosystem.”
Minister of Conservation Maggie Barry said it was “terribly sad to see these magnificent creatures in this state”. Watch a video of the rescue attempt at